Tootfinder

❝“Free speech culture” becomes bad and unserious when it starts telling us that speech is morally neutral, that we should not make value judgments against it, and that there is no moral component to promoting it. I am committed to the defense of the legal right to speak, but the defense of speech does not require us to refrain from speaking frankly about moral truths.
Giving Wax [a bigot] a platform to be a bigot is morally distinguishable from saying she should be free to be a bigot. “The only immoral thing you can say is that someone else’s speech is immoral” is not an ethos worthy of respect.❞
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-fashionable-notion-of-free-speech

So I busted out an old laptop and installed headless ubuntu minimal (I like to start small) so that I can start setting up some autonomous agents. My first step was to install Claude Code so that it could setup everything else for me, but after a few hours at it, both Claude and I admit that Claude Code is broken on a headless install. We tried a bunch a different way to get it to take a damn key, but the installer insists on an OAUTH auth that requires a browser.
I have a dislike fo…

Fantastic warm speech from the Green's Hannah Spencer, who just smashed the English right wing parties with a 4k majority win 👏🏼

Trump is 'not protecting Americans'
Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said Democrats were right to remain seated when Trump called on the crowd to stand if they believed in protecting US citizens over undocumented immigrants,
a line that Republicans are now using to call out Democrats.
“Bottom line is very simple,
we agree we need to protect Americans.
He’s not,”
Schumer told CNN this morning.
“By his reckless ICE agency in Minnesota,

The 'Most Massive Attack On Free Speech' Is Happening Right Now, And The Twitter Files Crew Is Mighty Quiet (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/18/the-most-massive-attack-on-free-speech-is-happening-right-now-and-the-twitter-files-crew-is-mighty-quiet/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260218/p66#a260218p66

Always readable Cory Doctorow - you should follow him BTW - but this speech he gave yesterday knocks the ball out of the park! Right on brother!
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ottawa

Huh, Free Speech Union leader being interviewed on RNZ by Jesse Mulligan right now... Wonder if he'll ask about FSU's Atlas Network connections? The FSU leader is very dark on NZ gov't talking about leaving Twitter as a platform. She's saying the gov't needs to be where the people are... I think this is a deeply flawed position.

View from the right:
For JD Vance, free speech only means his friends can’t be criticized
https://archive.ph/ygD07

nazis. i hate these guys. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/german-far-right-lawmaker-calls-us-german-nationalist-alliance-maga-gala-2025-12-14/

Carney's speech at Davos yesterday is an entire graduate class in geopolitics. This should be required study for everyone in leadership in every country right now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uStuQ-TbL9k

Someone tried to send this cartoon to me via Gmail, but it was blocked! So she sent it through protonmail. No freedom of speech at Gmail.

Suit Argues for Free Speech in Privately Owned Public Spaces | THE CITY — NYC News https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/12/19/privately-owned-public-spaces-skadden-brookfield-lawsuit/

Suit Argues for Free Speech in Privately Owned Public Spaces
A Brooklyn attorney protesting the firm Skadden, Arps for its $100 million deal with the Trump administration fights for his right to send a message on the plaza outside its midtown office.

US state department’s
Sarah B Rogers
has become face of
White House’s hostility to
European liberal democracies
As Donald Trump redoubled his war of words on the European Union and Nato in recent weeks,
a senior state department official,
Sarah B Rogers, was publicly attacking policies on hate speech and immigration by ostensible US allies,
and promoting far-right parties abroad.
Rogers has arguably become the public face of the Trump adm…

Just 32% of Americans say Trump has right priorities, new poll finds, ahead of State of the Union speech - live (Lauren Gambino/Press Association)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/feb/24/us-politics-latest-news-donald-trump-tariffs-iran
http://www.memeorandum.com/260224/p55#a260224p55

Cartoonist Michael de Adder
https://www.deadder.net/

Hannah the plumber
Spencer spoke of her pride in being a working-class woman from the constituency. That she understood how hard the cost of living crisis was for everyone. How she valued the way neighbours still looked out for one another. Multiculturalism had defeated the toxic politics of the right.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/27/hannah-spencer-speech-gorton-denton-byelection-sketch?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Following federal cuts to history-focused organizations, the president of the Canadian Historical Association, Colin Coates, sent this letter to Marc Miller, the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture.
One thing might not be obvious: Coates's reference to Carney's recent Quebec City speech suggests Canadians' need for historical context right now. He doesn't agree with Carney's claims. In fact, most Canadian historians would dispute them.

Stephen Miller is feeling powerful. He's out here claiming "might makes right" and saying the US can do anything.
Miller forgets that he's not the one with the power. The powerful guy repeats himself constantly, wanders off to look at his ballroom construction mid-speech, has fluid-filled ankles, and over-thinned blood. Miller forgets that the "powerful" never remain so for long and that "with great power, there must also be great responsibility."…

If it was a Window machine or a "Regular peoples" Android device I would do the same.
Comic by @…
#privacy #comic

(from friends in the EU)

(from friends in the EU)

“Canada supports the United States…..”
these are the only words that matter and I’m sorry what? This is “our” position? No. I reject this!!
Canada has stood for humanitarian law and international peace and security for nearly a century.
We should be a “Middle Power” with values. Right? Wasn’t that the Davos speech?!
But here we are clapping meekly from the sidelines as the country that would love to annex us, now ruled by a Christo-Fascist Regime, and in partnership with a Judeo-Fascist Regime blows up people in a country ruled by a Islamo-Fascist regime.
We are basically back to the Middle Ages but with nukes in our back pocket.
These are the three most dangerous countries in the world all fighting amongst themselves. We should not be taking sides, except for the side of peaceful civilians of all religions in all countries.
This is not the way.
I am shocked at the shallowness, the naïveté and the cowardice of Carney’s foreign policy.
#canpoli #cdnpoli #canada #iran #usa #israel #palestine #war #genocide #fascism

Re “apply the pressure anyway:” that’s advice I got from…Keith Ellison.
I was part of a citizen group pressuring him to vote for the ACA when he was in the House. He met with us, and gave us an impassioned speech about universal care and how the ACA was a good first step but insufficient, relating it to the less-remembered civil rights acts of the 1950s that laid the groundwork for the big one in 1964.
Somebody from the group finally asked him, “Why are we meeting with you? You’re already convinced!”
He replied (paraphrasing here): “I •need• your pressure. I need it even if I already agree. If you’re pressuring me, then I can get on the floor of the House and say ‘My constituents are beating down the doors of my office! This has tremendous support!’ I can tell my colleagues in private about how agitated voters are. If you apply pressure, I can pass that pressure forward. I need you to do it! •That• is why you’re meeting with me.”
And now Keith Ellison is MN Attorney General. He’s already started doing the right thing. Follow his advice, and apply that pressure!

The BBC running damage control on its own broadcast is wild to witness. The most egregious part of the affair to me is that no one from BAFTA or the BBC even bothered to apologize to Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo when they got off the stage, let alone tell *them* what was going to be done about it. There was no effort to bring the three people involved together for resolution at the time of the incident, nothing.
But the other part of this that just grates on me with every article is the BBC trying to defend itself by saying “that another racial slur had been edited out of the broadcast.”
#BBC #BAFTA #Racism #FreePalestine #Israel #Gaza #Palestine #misinformation #disinformation #complicity
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165835